Prison crime not dropping with the population

AUSTIN – Even as crime rates across Texas have dipped, there is one place where crime still is going strong: Texas prisons.

And it's not just the inmates.

New statistics obtained by the Chronicle show that 3,001 criminal charges have been referred against imprisoned felons since 2009. Another 584 charges have been referred against correctional officers. Those numbers generally appear to be holding steady so far this year, even as the number of inmates housed in Texas prisons has dropped during the same period.

Officials attribute the figures to a much tougher population of felons serving time behind bars amid growing turnover and inexperience in the ranks of correctional officers.

"As it gets hotter through the summer, we'll have more assaults – offenders on staff, offenders on offenders, all kinds," said Bruce Toney, inspector general for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the chief investigator for prison crimes. "Our busy months are just now starting."

Of the 3,001 criminal cases against inmates – for a variety of crimes ranging from murder to contraband smuggling to sexual assault – the crime rate reached a peak in 2012, when 683 charges were filed.

In the first four months of this year, 87 convicts faced charges, though prison officials said the crime rates tend to rise during the hot summer months.

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By comparison, 93 correctional officers faced criminal charges last year for crimes inside prisons, ranging from bribery to theft to sexual assault to official oppression. That is down from a high of 154 in 2009, according to the statistics made available under the Texas Public Information Act.

Tough reputation

In years past, the numbers of crimes committed inside Texas' 109 state prisons – the largest state correctional system in the United States – has been used as a general measure of how tough conditions are inside the cell blocks. Officials and guards acknowledge that the new numbers underscore that the Lone Star State's maximum-security lockups are living up to their long-standing tough reputation.

A March 17 beating at the Gib Lewis Unit near Woodville, in deep East Texas, highlights that.

There, shortly after 11 p.m., seven men stormed into a prison cell and began punching the inmate inside, a convicted Tarrant County burglar serving a two-year sentence. "Beat his a--," the attackers shouted over and over, as they held the inmate by throat, according to an internal report of the incident obtained by the Chronicle.

This, however, was no usual prison beat-down: The attackers were uniformed prison guards, led by a veteran lieutenant and a sergeant.

Investigators said both supervisors have been fired, and all seven guards now face charges of official oppression. The reason for the attack was that the convict, who had a history of harassing jailers, earlier had threatened a female guard.

As for the convict, he was paroled last week after serving about nine months, they said.

Stifling Texas heat

Incidents such as the Woodville attack are few and relatively rare, other prison officials insist, a far cry from the 1990s when a loosely organized gang of rogue guards – known as the "Blue Bandanas" for their neckwear – were blamed for a series of convict beatings across the state.

Sal Rodriguez, a retired prison guard who lives in San Antonio, said the reason that prison crimes rates have not dropped like those in the outside world is that the environment is ripe for it, with high percentages of convicts with mental health issues, large numbers of gang members locked up with few programs to keep them busy, the soaring Texas heat that brings unrest and the fact that many more violence-prone convicts are serving longer sentences thanks to tough-on-crime laws enacted two decades ago.

Add to that the fact that correctional officers in Texas are paid lower salaries than in many other states, with high turnover rates and a stressful work environment.

"It's a controlled world that doesn't change much," Rodriguez said. "There are a lot of lures, starting with contraband – to pay money to get it in, to take money because the pay (for correctional officers) is low. Prison is a tough place."

Echoing that sentiment was Lance Lowry, a veteran sergeant at the James H. Byrd Unit in Huntsville who also is president of a union that represents several thousand corrections employees: "I see and hear about a lot more uses of force at units, and I blame that on two things: Less-experienced officers and an increase in mental health issues in the inmate population.

Such may have been the case on June 11, internal reports show, when prison investigators arrested an agency truck driver for stealing hundreds of pounds of meat and other food from a warehouse at the Wynne Unit in Huntsville. He told authorities he traded tobacco to a convict who, in turn, handed over the purloined food in exchange.

No improvement found

If the rate of prison crimes is staying roughly the same, other statistics underscore that cell block conditions are not improving much – and may be getting tougher. In April, officers reported using chemical agents on unruly felons 403 times, compared with an average of 262 times a month last year. Some 104 offender assaults were reported in March, compared with an average of 85 a month last year.

Despite the currently lower population of Texas convicts – just under 151,000 were housed in the 109 state prisons this week, about 9,000 fewer than roughly a decade ago – Toney and other prison officials said they do not expect the number of prison crimes to decline much.

"Just like in the outside world, most of these are crimes of opportunity – but they get caught," Toney said. "Those officers went into that cell thinking they could get away with it, that they could make up a story to justify their use of force.